Saturday, April 26, 2014

Vikings 2.9: Great Post-Apocalyptic Narrative

My favorite scene in Vikings 2.9 was at the very beginning, where Althestan reads Ecbert some Roman military strategy, and concludes with, and there "the fragment ends". What a perfect picture of a post-apocalyptic culture, reliant on just shards of the previous civilization. It's a scene that many a science fiction narrative has tried to present - like in the George Pal 1960 movie of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine - but none has done it better than Vikings, and its focus on a Britain struggling to recover some of the store of knowledge fleetingly left to it by the departed Romans.

My second favorite scene also features Ecbert, talking in Olde English which sounds so much like German, and actually, even more like Yiddish. But these fine scenes by no means indicate that the rest of the episode didn't shine, and indeed 2.9 was one of the best episodes of the season and the series.

Especially compelling and vexing is Floki's growing antagonism towards Ragnar. It was not justified in the first place, as I mentioned in my review of the episode a few weeks ago in which it first reared its ugly head, and now Horick, whom I'm liking even less than Jarl Borg and Haraldson (well, maybe about the same as Haraldson) is egging the deranged Floki on to kill Ragnar's children. Floki seems to have a special fixation on Bjorn, and I wouldn't mind Bjorn sending Floki on to the after-life as Bjorn defends himself.

But the wily Floki is unlikely to challenge Bjorn face to face, so who will be watching his back? Ragnar can't be everywhere at once. My guess/hope is that Lagertha will save Bjorn. Althestan, who I'm glad to see is back with the Norse, could also come to Bjorn's aid (but if he dies doing this, that would be a shame and a waste of a pivotal character). Also, possibly, Floki could snap out of it. In any case, I've grown tired of his whining, and the Norse obviously have enough to ships to get to England that they don't need his shipbuilding craft any longer.

About Me

Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor of Communication &
Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City.His 8 nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997),
Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003), Cellphone (2004), and New New Media (2009, 2nd edition 2012), have been the
subject of major articles in the New York Times, Wired, the Christian Science
Monitor, and have been translated into 12 languages. His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (1999, ebook 2012), Borrowed Tides (2001), TheConsciousness Plague (2002, 2013), The Pixel Eye (2003), The Plot To SaveSocrates (2006, ebook 2012), and Unburning Alexandria (2013).His short stories
have been nominated for Nebula, Hugo, Edgar, and Sturgeon Awards.Paul Levinson appears on "The
O'Reilly Factor" (Fox News), "The CBS Evening News,"“NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” (PBS),“Nightline” (ABC), NPR, and numerous
national and international TV and radio programs. His 1972 album, Twice Upon a Rhyme, was re-issued in 2009 (CD) and 2010 (remastered vinyl). He reviews the best of
television in his InfiniteRegress.tv blog, and was listed in The Chronicle of
Higher Education’s “Top 10 Academic Twitterers” in 2009.

e-mail received from a reader:Dear Paul, I just dreamed of airships flying between raindrops. I just returned from 2042 CE, where I sold my hardcover copy of The Plot to Save Socrates for seventy million Neo-Euros, because it had your response to this e-mail from way back in 2007 scotch-taped onto the inside of the cover. A Paul Levinson collector paid top Neo-Euro, because of the authentic archaic e-mail printout from you. It turns out that not many of your e-mails from before your tenure as CEO of HBO/Cinemax and terms as United Nations Secretary General will survive that far into the future. So, please respond to this e-mail, to help found my great-grandchildren's fortune. My Will will stipulate that they must share with your great grandchidren. Thanks! Tom